


Apotheosis

by choir



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Angst, M/M, References to Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-23
Updated: 2012-10-23
Packaged: 2017-11-16 21:09:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/543833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/choir/pseuds/choir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If Kise Ryouta wasn't perfect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Apotheosis

If Kise Ryouta wasn’t perfect:  
  
  
“It’s just illness,”  Ryouta says quietly, and Yukio knows there must be more; but with Ryouta, it is always impossible to tell.  
  
“Join when you get better,” says Yukio, “we’ll be waiting.”

 

  
  
  
  
  
They ask Yukio for evidence.  
  
 _I don’t know, I don’t know_ ; he frets, pulls at his hair. It’s a habit he picked up after watching Ryouta fall and fall, a red flurry of regret —  
  
 _Please try to remember_ , they say.  
  
 _I can’t, you can’t make me do that —_  
  
The unanswered questions become a bundle of noise, in Yukio’s head.  
  
 _Remember small things_ , they say. _The little memories_. They’re worried. Rushed. They want to get this over with. Yukio can tell.  
  
Yukio listens, despite this.  
  


 

  
  
  
_There is a tall freshman who watches their practices everyday with wide eyes. He blabbers to Yukio, when the players go home, about tactics and formations._   
  
_“Who’s that?” asks Moriyama, after the third straight week._   
  
_“Ryouta,” says Yukio. “He’s a freshman.”_   
  
_“Why doesn’t he join? He seems to like basketball enough.”_   
  
_“He can’t.”_   
  
_“Why not?”_   
  
_“He doesn’t say, really,” says Yukio._   
  
  


 

  
  
_“When’d you start playing basketball?” Ryouta asks, as they walk home._   
  
_“Who knows,” says Yukio. “When’d you get into it?”_   
  
_Ryouta coughs into his hand; his fingers clench into a fist. “A while ago. But it’s amazing, watching you all! Especially you, Yukio —”_   
  
_“Hey, I can’t take all the credit,” Yukio interrupts._   
  
_Ryouta shrugs. “Without you, there’s no team.”_   
  
_Yukio is silent, lips frozen._   
  


 

  
  
  
_The players become used to Ryouta’s presence, Yukio notices. They wave to him as he comes and goes, ask him for advice on strategies. They insist that he comes to their games, as an “assistant manager,” and smile when he laughs. Ryouta tells Yukio that he wishes they were not so attached, but Yukio does not believe him._   
  
_“That’s not true, is it,” says Yukio._   
  
_Ryouta laughs; “I mean it.”_   
  


 

  
  
  
 _Ryouta pins him against the wall of the gym; his fingers move slowly, against the fabric of Yukio’s shirt._  
  
 _“Quickly,” Ryouta mutters, as he traces a path on Yukio’s collarbone._

 

  
  
  
  
_They are quiet, when alone. Ryouta does not waste time when they are together; he says that it’s not his philosophy to wait, anymore._   
  
  


 

  
  
_Ryouta shoots a ball from the end of the three point line one day, devoid of sound from the rim._   
  
_Perfect, the regulars whisper, unknowing of the circumstances._   
  
_Ryouta shoots again, and again. Somewhere, Yukio knows that it is not perfect, no. Ryouta would not want to be called perfect; dedication would be more fitting._   
  
_He tastes iron in his mouth, a reminder of what Ryouta leaves behind, in him._   
  


 

  
  
  
_Yukio is sure that there is nothing more terrifying than watching Ryouta fall; knees buckling into each other, and the steady avalanche of limbs that follow._   
  
_Ryouta sobs, as he coughs into the floor; a mixture of anger and shock and humiliation, as the entire court falls silent to stare at Ryouta, the freshman of the bleachers. Yukio wants to yell them all, to get them to stop staring at the horizon of red in the center of their eyes, but he is frozen, too._   
  
_No one moves, as Ryouta cries and chokes, in the back of his throat._   
  
_Yukio swears that he has never felt more lonely, at that moment: watching the desperation flicker across Ryouta’s face in waves._   
  
  


 

  
  
_Yukio spends the weekend scrubbing the red stains off the floor._   
  
_He finds himself crying in frustration, too, when they refuse to move, permanently engrained into the floor, into them._   
  
  


 

  
  
_The gym is quiet, on Monday._   
  
_Yukio looks over at the bleachers towards Ryouta’s spot, the place where they all gather during break. Ryouta is there, in the shadows, motionless. Yukio wants to tell him to come out, to where they can all see him, but it is futile, at this point._   
  
_Ryouta slips out before anyone can talk to him._   
  
_They regulars; they ask, they pester. Yukio screams in aggravation, and they scatter. He wants to tell them that it’s pointless to wonder about things to which there is no answer, that he never knows perhaps what’s most important, in Ryouta’s mind. Should he lie, he thinks, to satisfy them?_   
  
_“I hate lies,” Ryouta tells him, the next day._   
  
_Yukio wonders. For once, he says to himself, he wants to be sure of something._   
  


 

  
  
  
 _Ryouta is then defined in Yukio’s mind as the pile of words that he cannot say; the questions, the answers that are never given. Yukio whispers into Ryouta’s ear, an oath made uncertain by the progression of time, a noose around their necks._  
  
 _But, this: Yukio thinks that everything becomes more daunting, as they lie in a mass of tangled limbs and sweat and desire. Ryouta’s skin blooms an insistent red under Yukio’s touch, as he mouths at the pale line of his throat. He whimpers, in the back of his throat, as he squirms and rolls his head back. And, Ryouta’s hands; they are cold, against Yukio’s back, as he scrambles for a grip against a solid surface._  
  
 _But, Yukio -- he is not a solid surface. He pines to be one, for Ryouta, for the sickly boy who cannot share his truth. Instead, Yukio marks himself on Ryouta’s chest, in the crook of his elbow._ His _, he whispers._  
  
  


 

  
  
_The blood on Yukio’s pillow the next day, the dried red at the tips of Ryouta’s mouth; Yukio feels helpless, at moments like these._   
  
_Ryouta tells him not to worry about it._   
  
  


 

  
  
I’m sorry, _Ryouta texts him, in the early morning._  
  
For? _he responds._  
  
 _Ryouta never answers. Later, Yukio thinks of this moment as the first and last time Ryouta is ever honest._  
  
  
  


 

  
 _Is that all?_  
  
Yukio shakes his head. How is it possible to tell strangers what Ryouta is to them? Ask the others, he pleads. He does not want to remember, but cannot stand to forget.  
  
 _The others say Ryouta was closest to you._  
  
Yukio wonders why the detective is speaking so softly, as if it makes it any easier.  
  
 _When did you hear of the hospitalization?_  
  
 _From — Moriyama. His dad … works at the general hospital near Kaijo —_  
  
 _How often did you visit?_  
  
 _I don’t — I don’t know, please stop —_  
  


 

  
  
  
_“You’re a liar,” he manages to stutter, at the sight of Ryouta hooked up by tubes and wires. Ryouta’s life, the one that they all held glued to them, now settled into the inner workings of an IV._   
  
_Ryouta gives a weak smile. “Always was one.”_   
  
_“You’re a hypocrite,” hisses Yukio, “a fucking hypocrite.”_   
  
_Yukio cries, again, tells Ryouta that he wishes he never met him, that he never got close to the team. Team is a lie, though; Yukio and Ryouta know that it is only them. It has only ever been them, since the start._   
  
_The hospital bed—it separates them, and suddenly Ryouta is miles away._   
  


 

  
  
 _Memories are a fickle thing. They bend, twist; hardly stationary, they flow, as time passes. There perhaps is change, as lies and emotions and accumulate and fester in them. And, of course, anger and amnesia; the process of regret. Yukio undergoes this, that year—he bends and conforms under the tubes and steady clicking of machines. He isn’t sure what pulls him back, when Ryouta isolates himself behind the screen curtains of the hospital room; silent, heartbreaking, a constant spiral downward._  
  
 _“A couple years,” says Ryouta, from behind the screen._  
  
 _“What?”_  
  
 _“The doctors give me a couple years.”_  
  
 _The tar, in Yukio’s stomach; it boils over._ Dumbass, _he thinks._ Idiot, idiot, idiot —  
  
 _“I don’t know if I mind too much.” Ryouta tugs at the wires that line his body, and scratches at the one across his chest._  
  
 _Yukio lets out an exasperated sigh, and Ryouta laughs, at this._  
  


 

  
  
  
_Winter is more quiet than usual, in the hospital room._   
  
_Yukio and Ryouta sit in mostly silence, now; Yukio holds onto Ryouta’s hand, covered in long, purple bruises from needles. He remembers when they did not waste a second, and wonders where that kind of love went. Now, it is the kind where Yukio holds pain beneath his skin, fighting._   
  
_Ryouta says that Yukio should leave, if he troubles him that much; Yukio just shakes his head._   
  
_“That’s not fair to me,” says Ryouta, softly._   
  
_Apologies; Yukio is horrified to discover how easily they come to him._   
  


 

  
  
  
 _In Spring, Ryouta sleeps._  
  
 _When Yukio appears at the door after school, Ryouta is quiet, chest heaving in ragged, short breaths that almost looked pained. Somehow, he is almost happy that Ryouta is never conscious. He hates the thought, but it is almost too hard to have to be forced awake. So he waits, for Ryouta to take him back to the beginning, when they smiled against each other’s lips and laced their fingers underneath the table._  
  
 _The iron, in his mouth; he cannot taste it anymore._  
  
 _When Ryouta wakes: “If you hate me so much, just leave,” he says, when Yukio mentions this._  
  
 _When Ryouta cries: Yukio’s eyes are forced open, and he plummets downward._  
  
I’m sorry, _Yukio says. He fails to mention that is nearly too suffocating for him to bare, now, but it is not a lie. It never has been._  
  
I’m sorry, too, _Ryouta says._  
  
 _They are doomed._  
  


 

  
  
  
_At the speed of light, Ryouta moves ahead._   
  
_Yukio waits, but does not expect. Ryouta is a puzzle he never expected to solve._   
  


 

  
  
  
 _And then?_  the Detective asks.  
  
 _The note_ , says Yukio. He clutches the scrap of paper within his right palm.  
  
 _You are sure you don’t know what happened to it?_  
  
 _No_. But Yukio remembers the words, spelled out for the last time before Ryouta’s fall. He holds them against his heart, refuses to give them up.  
  
  
  
  


 

  
  
  
  
  
 _I’m sorry, Yukio. This will be the first and last time I am ever honest._  
  
 _I love you. Please never stop doing what you do._


End file.
